


A Pile of Fur and Feathers

by raven_aorla



Category: Buzzfeed The Try Guys (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst and Feels, Daemon Feels, Daemonverse Rules Guide Within, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, HDM Inspired But Not a Crossover - Freeform, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 20:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19341817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: The onesies the Try Guys wear sometimes don't match their daemons, but are a separate in-joke. This is a story about what their daemons really look like, act like, and how they came to be as close to each other as their boys have.





	A Pile of Fur and Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> On the off-chance you haven't read/seen His Dark Materials (which I haven't marked as a crossover or fusion because no other elements of HDM are present here) or have not encountered daemonverse AU before, here's the rules I'm going by. Some are HDM canon, some are made up by me because HDM is silent on the matter. I'm doing this because I get super confused by, like, Sentinel and Guide AUs, for example. 
> 
> \- A daemon is essentially your soul, but in the corporeal shape of an animal.  
> \- Children's daemons can change shape. Daemons settle on a shape during puberty. It has some correlation to your personality, but you have no control over it.  
> \- Boys get girl daemons, girls get boy daemons, NB kids get whatever their daemons feel best as. Trans kids get daemons that are the opposite of their real gender, not their assigned gender, though it may take time to realize.  
> \- The amount that a daemon talks to other daemons or humans is an indicator of emotional intimacy, and it's uncommon for daemons to talk to many humans.  
> \- A human touching another person's daemon is either an act of extremely rare closeness that few people ever attain with another, or a horrifying violation. Daemons touching each other out of necessity is commonplace, and daemons touching each other just for fun is a milder, everyday sign of emotional intimacy. 
> 
> Everything else should be clear in the text itself. Let me know if it's not. Enjoy!

The onesies the Try Guys wear during Try Guys Game Time don’t correspond with their daemons, which is a really good thing in Keith’s case. Hauling a giraffe everywhere would seriously cramp his style. No, the onesies were chosen based on the results of their hit video _Try Guys Try the D-H Swap Challenge_ , a viral Youtube trend in which humans ask their daemons what they think they would look like as humans, along with what forms their humans would take as daemons, then report their results to the audience with some kind of illustration.

In actuality, each Try Guy’s daemon can either perch on his shoulder or be carried in his arms if needed, which was useful for travel in particular but also for things like being “trapped” on a raft at sea or riding a roller coaster. Their daemons get an opening sequence in each video just like they do, and in the same order.

Cue music: _bam shik abam bam, bam, bam_

*

BEATRIX is a blue-eyed cockatoo who is very sociable and very, very loud, though the only humans she speaks actual words to are Keith, Becky, and what she considers close friends and family. No one escapes the cockatoo noises unless the situation is extremely serious, and she happily talks to the daemons of anyone she’s at least slightly acquainted with. Beatrix spends most of her day on Keith’s shoulder but will also wander around on foot or wing to the extent that their bond permits it. When she hears fast music she likes, she lifts her yellow head crest and headbangs along while flapping. Though daemons don’t need to eat, she’s partial to the occasional nut or piece of fruit. She nips Keith’s fingers or ear when she thinks he’s being obtuse. In general, though, the two of them get along very well and always have. She’s the only bird daemon to come out of Keith’s nuclear family.

“Which makes me a special Habersbirder,” Beatrix told Martina proudly in the early days of Keith’s friendship with Ned. 

“Niiiice,” Martina replied, dabbing with a wing.

**

MARTINA is an osprey, also known as a seahawk. Like many seabirds they mate for life and are devoted parents, but ospreys have the distinction of being featured in an ancient Chinese poem as a symbol of fidelity. Ned lets people know this more often than Martina considers entirely necessary. Like many bird daemons, Martina has a pretty big range of motion away from Ned, and the two of them can handle it as long as they can hear each other yell. She lets him play soccer on his own and flies above the field to watch the game from a better vantage point. Her talons are sharp enough that when she rides Ned shoulder he either has to wear a bunch of layers or strap on a special pad. The Fulmer house and the 2nd Try office are full of custom-built perches for her, though, because she’s not as clingy as Beatrix and Ned complains about his muscles aching from her weight. Every once in awhile Beatrix and Martina play airborne tag. Martina doesn’t care for fish or any other food, but she enjoys games where people toss things in a body of water and she has to grab them.

Ned and Ariel are among the 20% of estimated humans living worldwide who have consensually touched someone else’s daemon for reasons other than a medical emergency. It’s more intimate than any sexual act, more like a spiritual version of cracking open someone’s rib cage and cradling their beating heart in your hands. Ariel started it when she and Ned came home from his grandfather’s funeral and he started sobbing, raw and ripped apart. Alonso huddling with Martina and grooming her feathers with his short tern’s bill wasn’t enough, and neither was Ariel’s arms around Ned, so Ariel had slowly, tentatively reached out to stroke Martina’s back. Years later, during the ninth hour of Ariel’s labour, Ned picked up Alonso and put him on the shoulder Martina wasn’t already occupying. He hardly thought about it, only trying to put him somewhere safe while Ariel was suffering, and it calmed her right away. The hospital staff had been professional enough not to comment. Though he got a few stares and freaked out a little afterwards when he realized what he’d done. 

With her sharp eyes, Martina was the first one to spot Wes’ daemon Miranda when she appeared as a glowing clump of Dust. Because Wes was born early, it took hours for his daemon to show up instead of one or two, and everyone had been holding their breath until she did. Daemons that take more than a day to appear after birth are a sign of a child with a low chance of survival. These days Miranda is still mostly assuming baby chick forms thanks to having a bird daemons around her almost all the time - including Keith’s frequent babysitting - though she’ll turn into a puppy to play with Bean. 

***

DEVORAH almost never gets called that. She’s Dev, and has been since Zach was still too young to talk. He had no problem with her settling as a cat with a dappled black-white-orange tortoiseshell coat and vivid green eyes, but they got into a fight because he was embarrassed that she’d settled as a _munchkin_ cat with stubby little legs. At the time he was dealing with not the best mental health, plus a bad reputation at school for being dorky and unmasculine, so it wasn’t a good time to have such a “weak” daemon. He stopped yelling at her when he noticed that her tail had gotten bushy and her back arched in fight-or-flight mode. Horrified at himself, he gathered her into a tight hug while they both cried it out. As more secure adult, he loves her to bits and shows her off at first opportunity to everyone he meets. He carries her in a modified mesh backpack when she gets tired, but she runs alongside him as much as she can.

Dev has a mischievous streak. During their time at Buzzfeed, she convinced Shane Madej’s daemon, a ghost corn snake (“ghost” in the sense of “albino”, though the irony of her human being a skeptical paranormal investigator was hilarious), that they should star in a video where they competed to catch and devour live mice. The idea was not approved. In the post-Buzzfeed present, Dev and Beatrix spend a lot of time playing in the background while Zach and Keith are in the same room, sometimes making a ruckus to the point where people need to tell them to quiet down.

Though she’ll talk to friends’ daemons, Dev doesn’t talk to humans other than Zach, a small handful of friends and family, Maggie, and the other Try Guys. She’s spoken on camera exactly once, in Zach’s announcement to the world that he has an autoimmune disorder. Right at the end of his story, he asks her, “Did you know something was up with my bones and joints, Devorah? You’re named after a female judge and prophet of the Israelites, so, like, were you trying to lead me somewhere?”

At which point she gives his hand a few licks and says, “I think you’re giving me too much credit for knowing where we’re going, but we’ll get there.”

(This later ends up as a quote on limited edition Try Guys merch. Dev is super proud and lords it over the other daemons.)

****

JI-HYUN didn’t lose her ability to change her shape until the day Eugene stepped onto the USC campus as a new freshman, as if she only then felt safe being herself all the time. Eugene could totally relate to that. However, she started living as a red fox almost all the time they were alone starting when he was about twelve. When they were upset, really upset, they’d go to the nearest patch of woods or other isolated place as soon as they could, and Ji-Hyun would _scream_. Regardless of what a viral video years later would say, foxes make high-pitched territorial and mating calls that sound like a human woman in agony. Or a human child, as the case may be. Eugene would lean against a tree or rock or wall with a blank face until she was done. 

She doesn’t do the primal scream therapy so much anymore. Hanging out with Pesto and Emma is better. They’re smaller than her and don’t make her nervous, just stupid warm furry bundles of love that she can run with and boss around and cuddle up to without all the complexity. All three of them pile up on Eugene’s bed if he doesn’t have a human there with him, and she and Eugene will both feel warm and at peace in a way they secretly rarely do in the daytime. 

There’s a few strong stereotypes that go with having a fox daemon - cunning, sly, quick, sexy. As Eugene started coming into his own, he and Ji-Hyun started embracing those stereotypes rather than avoiding them, though he is always careful to point out that red foxes are also one of the few interesting wild animals that naturally live in both South Korea and Texas. Nobody believes that’s the whole story. Ji-Hyun learned how to scroll through Youtube comments on Eugene’s phone with a stylus in her mouth if he sets up the website for her, and she snickers at all the _omg of course ugene’s got a vixen hes so hawt_ variants. She knows she’s a sassy girl, and she shows it off when Eugene dances. She always dances with him, with nimble jumps in perfect harmony with his movements. When he choreographs a routine he’ll be part of, they always account for where she’ll be at any given beat. 

Ji-Hyun is bold with how she moves, both dancing and her eloquently disdainful looks that make for great zoom-ins, but not with how she talks. She was raised not to speak to any humans except Eugene, except in dire need, and not to speak to any daemons except Eugene’s mother’s, who was the most tender of the family daemons towards her. She's spoken to Eugene's younger sister on five occasions. Nobody else. At all. For most of his life, if they had company and she wanted to tell Eugene something, she whispered in his ear, or he’d take her aside for a moment. 

Then one day at Buzzfeed, when Eugene and Keith both happened to be working late and most of the other employees in their office had gone home, Beatrix suddenly landed on Eugene’s workstation. Keith wasn’t far away but he was wearing headphones and oblivious. “Does it make you uncomfortable when I address you directly?” 

“I have editing to do!” Eugene exclaimed, trying to shoo her away with his hands without touching her by accident. Ji-Hyun emerged from under his desk where she’d been reading a large hardback book, letting it lay flat and turning the pages with her mouth, and poised herself to spring onto the desk.

“Tell me and I’ll go,” Beatrix said. 

“It’s kinda weird, but you’re like that with lots of people and, uh, I guess I’m used to it and it’s not so bad by now,” Eugene said.

“Does she ever talk to anyone but you? Like, at all? I have never heard a single word and we’ve been friends for nearly two years, yo.” Beatrix stood on one foot so she could point a toe at Ji-Hyun. “We all thought maybe it was a cultural thing, you know, but I just found out Y.B. Chang and Evan Ghang’s daemons talk to each other all the time, and Y.B.’s daemon sometimes talks directly to Kelsey Impicciche. And Y.B. and Evan aren’t dating each other and also they’re, like, twice as Korean as you are, since they’re literally Korean citizens who were born and raised there.”

“Rude,” Ji-Hyun said, then froze. 

Beatrix did a stupid cute happy flappy dance and flew back to Keith. Neither Ji-Hyun nor Eugene ever found out if Beatrix told her human how incredibly forward she’d been.

But...

While it wasn’t like Ji-Hyun immediately did a 180, that was the start of a gradual thaw between her and Beatrix, then her and Dev, and eventually her and Martina. Beatrix was the easiest because she actively tried to bridge the gap, and Dev was the next easiest because she was so non-threatening. She sometimes fell off things and therefore needed to be grabbed by the scruff of her neck like a fox kit for her own good.

“Wait,” Ji-Hyun said after the fifth time she rescued Dev from a tumble, “you’re not this clumsy when I’m not nearby. Are you doing this on purpose?”

“Whoops,” Dev said innocently.

“Unbelievable.” Ji-Hyun paused. “Next time you want physical contact just ask.”

Dev’s eyes went round. “You mean that?” 

“You girls okay?” Zach asked from the other side of the room, where Ned was holding court about this month’s budget. Dev shouted that they were fine. Eugene and Ji-Hyun shared a look to confirm it. Keith gave them a sneaky thumbs-up and handed Beatrix a cashew like she’d just won a bet. 

It wasn’t that Ji-Hyun disliked Martina, but both of them were more aggressive than the other two, and when away from the Fulmer household Martina seemed to represent Ned’s jock-y side more than she represented Ned’s adorkable nerdy side. Eventually they created a bond through play fights. Sometimes they sparred on land and sometimes with Ji-Hyun swimming, Martina flying low and trying to lift her up, Ji-Hyun snapping with her jaws raised and trying to pull her down. 

“You two aren’t trying to kill each other, right?” Ned asked with mild concern the first time they did this in a pond, which at least two random onlookers and Eugene himself were filming. 

“Nope!” Ji-Hyun shouted, and saved her cringe at talking to a HUMAN OTHER THAN HERS for later. Turns out the world didn’t end.

<3<3<3<3

It was a cold night in New York City and the Try Guys had important book-related meetings in the morning. They’d had a choice of multiple rooms in a hotel far from where they needed to be tomorrow, or stay in a much closer hotel but only get one room with two beds that also weren’t as big as would be ideal. Easy decision. As usual, Keith and Zach shared because Keith was so much limb to deal with that only small, cuddle-loving Zach could comfortably fit next to him, and Eugene and Ned shared because Ned lay still in his sleep and Eugene preferred not to wake up surprised to have someone who wasn’t a sexual partner closer to him than they were earlier. 

Eugene woke up way too early and realized he had the opposite problem. Ji-Hyun wasn’t in arm’s reach on the other side of him from Ned like she’d been when he’d closed his eyes. Their bond wasn’t stretched uncomfortably, though, and it was telling him that she was feeling cozy and content. He got up and tiptoed to the closet, which was slightly open.

All four daemons had made a nest in there out of towels, hotel bathrooms, and extra pillows, and were asleep in a pile of fur and feathers. Ji-Hyun cracked one eye open, but Eugene only smiled and headed back to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I would love to know what you think.
> 
> Note: I envision Ariel's daemon specifically as [Sandwich tern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwich_tern), but the name is so funny that I only used "tern" in text to avoid taking away from the emotions of the scene. They're named after the place, not the food. Imagine a gull, but smaller, prettier, and far less obnoxious. 
> 
> Note 2: There's a video where the Test Friends, also Buzzfeed and kind of a Try Guys knockoff but has its moments thanks to Jen and the Unsolved boys being in it, get a snake massage. And Shane has the most wholesome adoration and fondness to a ghost corn snake that someone hands him. Ages ago I read a really good Buzzfeed Unsolved daemonverse fic that made that his daemon's form, and I wished to pay tribute despite this being Try Guys.


End file.
